Visiting Cochem, Germany in Winter

A couple of weeks ago Dennis and I went for a long weekend trip to Germany with his family. We stayed near the lovely little town of Cochem, which sits on the banks of the Moselle River, in the middle of the Moselle Valley Wine Region. Not only is the town absolutely gorgeous, but it even has a stunning castle sitting on the hill overlooking the town and river; the Reichsburg Cochem.

Cochem is full of those lovely half-timbered buildings that are so evocative of small German towns, and it was just lovely to walk among them along the windy streets, past the church and up the hill to the castle.  Not to mention the Christmas decorations everywhere as it was the very end of November!

I enjoyed looking into all the Christmas shops, as well as spotting quaint little details throughout the town, like the merman on the side of this building:

This restaurant getting into the medieval theme:

This strangely sneaky statue with his bucket of water and a secret:

As well as all sorts of other little details making this town so pretty:

It was a pretty steep hike through the streets up to the castle, but the view was definitely worth it.

Dennis and I returned to the castle on the Monday for a tour, but you will need to wait for a later post with all the photos and details of that! Later in the evening we braved the cold and came back into the town for some more Christmas decorations and prettiness; mostly because I wanted to see the Christmas tree all lit up! It didn’t disappoint, and there was even a little Christmas train!

Our base of operations during our stay was the Ferienresort Cochem, where we stayed in little adjoining bungalows that were quite cozy. We were even treated to our first snow-fall for the year!

The snow was so fluffy and a good inch or two that stayed on the ground the next morning. We even went for a night-time stroll in the snow, which was pretty magical. These two photos were taken by Dennis’s father, Leo Brandt and really capture the magical, hushed quality of the night!

This is just a little taste of our trip to Germany, stay tuned for more posts about our visit to Trier (the oldest town in Germany), our tour of the Reichsburg Cochem, and a visit to one of the most magical castles I have ever seen, Burg Eltz!